Montgomery County seeks answers for swelling jail population

Montgomery County officials are facing a dilemma partly of their own making: What to do with an ever-growing jail population after selling off another lockup.The county's jailers are struggling to find space for inmates — with dozens on occasion being forced to sleep on the floor or be shipped to a jail outside the county. The 1,200-bed jail is one of only five statewide — and the only one in the Houston region — rated "at risk" for overcrowding by the Texas Commission on Jail Standards.Next door to the county jail, separated only by a cyclone fence topped with razor wire, sits the Joe Corley Detention Center, built by the county in 2008 for $45 million. While the 1,500-bed facility was planned to someday handle jail overflow, the inmate population didn't rise quickly enough, prompting the county to sell it to a private company in May 2013, said Commissioner Craig Doyal, who is poised to become county judge in January after a Republican primary win.Commissioners said they felt pressured into the sale because of an Internal Revenue Service deadline that could have cost the county the tax-exempt status on the bonds used to build the center.Commissioners had pledged during the bond election that local inmates would fill 30 percent of the center within five years — but not a single inmate had ever been placed there. They had instead been allowing the U.S. government to pay to house federal prisoners there.Florida-based Geo Group Inc. bought the center to house undocumented immigrants, leaving commissioners on Monday with little choice but to begin reviewing new proposals, costing in the $200 million range, to expand the jail.Doyal points out that the county earned a $20-million profit from selling the center to Geo for $65 million. At the same time, Geo pays the county an additional $250,000 per year in taxes for the center and $500,000 for managing its federal prisoner contracts.In addition, the proposed jail expansion, if completed, would be four times larger than the detention center.Nonetheless, Commissioner James Noack, who wasn't elected until after the detention center was built, has questioned whether the sale was "premature,""If we're going to need a jail in the future, we should hold onto it," he told the media at the time as the county started seeing some explosive growth.Improper dealingsA Montgomery County newspaper, the Conroe Courier, sided with Noack in an editorial that called the sale "shortsighted." The editorial also questioned whether commissioners were disposing of the jail due to a controversial investigation swirling around how the center and another mental health facility had been built.Since then, district attorney Brett Ligon has closed the probe, saying the statue of limitations had run out on lesser offenses such as conflict of interest violations, that a grand jury had been exploring.However, with commissioners' court approval, county attorney J.D. Lambright is pursuing repayment of about $13 million in what he alleges are "overcharges" and improper dealings during the construction of these projects.He has sent the letters demanding to be reimbursed from a developer, a retired county auditor and a former commissioner — all of whom deny the county attorney's contention that they benefitted improperly."We're still talking back and forth with them and all their attorneys before deciding whether a civil lawsuit will be filed," he said last week.Meanwhile, with no detention center to ease the overcrowding, the county has hired Broaddus Associates and CGL to come up with new ways to expand and update the existing jail.Problems with locationLaura Mailello, speaking for the planning team, told commissioners Monday that the county had squeezed extra cells out of their 1987 jail by converting most of its multipurpose rooms and indoor recreation space into inmate housing. With the moves, the county now has about 1,200 beds."That's not something you want to do. We all know inmate idleness can create security problems," she said, explaining why the jail needs updating. Some quadrants of the jail are also so outdated and dilapidated that they need to be demolished, she added.Sheriff Tommy Gage said he's secured a contract that allows him to move up to 30 inmates from his jail to the San Jacinto County jail at a cost of $30 per day each.Broaddus and CGL suggested two alternate solutions for handling the county's jail population for the next 20 years: build a new jail on a new 30-acre site or expand the existing jail to three stories on its current site. Both proposals would roughly double the number of existing beds, and officials say they want to restore classrooms and multipurpose rooms.The cost of new 707,000-square-foot jail was pegged at $202 million; while adding 610,000 square feet to the jail was projected to cost $197.4 million.Expenses for the new jail, however, did not include funds for a new 30-acre site that would be required. Commissioner Ed Rhinehart said the land could cost millions, and commissioners appeared to be leaning toward keeping the jail on its existing site."Nobody wants a jail located near them," Doyal said.

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